White Beans With Cabbage & Potatoes

No wait! Stay with me! This is actually an incredibly delicious meal, I promise!! When my roommate walked into the kitchen and asked me what I was cooking he eyed me dubiously but agreed to try some and has been converted!!

This is a super quick dish to prepare, very budget friendly and frankly as healthy or unhealthy as you care to make it! (Although perhaps one to avoid if you are prone to gas!!)

I'm a huge fan of vegetarian food and generally when I'm cooking for myself I tend to keep it meat-free. Ive been digging through some of my veggie cookbooks again as I try to inspire myself to get back into the kitchen more and stumbled upon this old favorite. It was perfect timing as I had some potatoes and cabbage that needed to be used. Ive mixed it up a little from the original recipe and in my opinion it is even more delicious now!!

Anyway, here's what you'll need:

• 2 tbsp olive oil 
• 1 medium potato, cut into small cubes
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 shallot, finely sliced (which I actually didn't use today as, for once, we were out of shallots)
• 1 can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
• half a head of cabbage, finely sliced
• grated parmesan or pecorino

And here's what you do:

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet or saute pan. Add the potatoes and season well with salt. Cover and cook until potatoes are cooked through and crispy, stirring a couple of times to make sure all sides are evenly crispy. This should take 5 to 8 minutes.
2. Add the garlic and shallot and cook for a minute or two.
3. Add the beans in a single layer and cook for a couple of minutes until the beans start getting a little crispy. Stir (carefully, or the beans will get mushy) and cook for another minute or two. 
4. Add the cabbage and stir in carefully. Cover again and cook until the cabbage is cooked to your liking, 2 or 3 minutes.
5. Serve garnished with your choice of cheese

Despite the simple list of ingredients, this dish has a lot of character. The crispy potatoes and cheese make it feel a little more decadent that it really is, and the beans and cabbage give it a healthy punch of protein and greens. This will be featuring a lot more often on my weekday lunch rotation!

You can easily adapt it to fit what you have lying around. No cabbage? I bet it would work well with leeks or chard or any other leafy green vegetable. No cannellini beans? I'm sure you have a can of some kind of beans lurking in the back of your cabinet. 

You could jazz it up with any fresh herbs you have lying around. Maybe some flavoured oil or butter instead of the olive oil? How about a wee pinch of chili flakes to give it a kick?

A variation I am keen to try is a brunch-ier version, starting with some cooked bacon then sauteing the potatoes in the leftover bacon fat, swapping out the cabbage for leeks or Brussels sprouts, then topping off with a fried or poached egg. Mmmmmm ..... I'll let you know how that goes!!

Confessions Of A Recipe Whore ....

(Or How I Learned To Cook)

What kind of cook are you? Can you wander into the kitchen, rummage through the fridge and cabinets and create a masterpiece? Or would you struggle to make scrambled eggs without a recipe?

I am very much the latter (and yes, I did get my scrambled egg recipe from a book. Don't judge, they're so much tastier now!!) 

Until I moved to the US in 2011 I didn't really cook. I had zero kitchen confidence and the last thing I wanted to do after a long day was get to work in the kitchen. Luckily for me my late husband was one of the aforementioned geniuses who could whip up a gourmet meal from nothing and we had a good arrangement where he took care of the cooking and I took care of the rest of the domestic chores.

Long before the move, though, I had started my cookbook habit. When I worked in the bank there was a book club that would drop by every now and then and leave a random selection for us to peruse. There would be everything from romances to thrillers, kids books, and occasionally a cookbook. 

Leafing through the delicious recipes I began to dream of being able to create these dishes and, with good intentions, I started my cookbook collection. The problem was I was too lazy to do anything other than read and drool over them!! It became an office joke that I was the proud owner of the most pristine cookbook collection in Glasgow - no bent pages or food splatter on my books!!

Once we moved to the States I had the luxury of being a housewife and with time on my hands I decided it was time for me to learn to cook. With my husband working hard all day, the least I could do was feed him when he got home!!

My main collection

I remember one of the first meals I made for him in the tiny kitchen of the temporary apartment we lived in for the first couple of months until we got settled. Surprisingly it was something I decided to make up - a pork and bean stew that I couldn't make again if I tried, and I have tried! I was very nervous about how it would turn out, and very happy when he walked through the door and told me he could smell the stew walking down the corridor and had hoped that it was coming from our apartment! 

Dinner that night was a resounding success, but that was the stretch of my culinary imagination, and my shiny cookbook collection, along with most of our possessions, was still in transit and not due to arrive for another couple of months. Thus began my new habit - recipe magazines! 

I started off with the Food Network magazine and Cooking Light, which had simple recipes that were suited to my skill level. Soon I was picking up any new foodie magazine I could find and clipping out anything that looked fun. I had to get a filing box to store and organise them all!!

Despite having an extensive amount of recipes to try, and the arrival of my books, it wasn't long before I picked up my third habit - recipe mailing lists. Bon Appetit! Epicurious! Serious Eats! Every time I saw a link to a new website or blog I would sign up, and at one point I was getting links to 40 or so recipes every day! 

Now, not all of these recipes were things I wanted to try but I was probably printing out 15 or 20 new recipes a week and adding them to my filing box. It was ridiculous! I had enough recipes to feed us for a good couple of years, but still I kept adding to the collection! 

No-one was more surprised than I to discover that I had a real passion for cooking, and people often don't believe that I have only been cooking for 4 years. Don't get me wrong, I mess things up as often as I get them right, but I don't think Ive ever made anything that was actually inedible!

Many people have asked me if I was bored being a housewife and the answer was always a very firm no! A large part of my perfect day was spending a little time looking through my recipes and deciding what to make, wandering round to the grocery store to get my fresh ingredients, then putting some music on and spending an afternoon dancing around the kitchen while I peeled and chopped. It was very therapeutic and rewarding to transform basic ingredients into something magical, even if the end result wasn't always quite as I hoped.

My overflow collection (not including the box in the garage ...)

I am prone to being over-ambitious in the kitchen now and love challenging myself. One of my greatest pleasures is cooking for friends, and one of my biggest downfalls is choosing to try something new and elaborate when I'm throwing a dinner party. Anyone who has attended one of my soirees has probably witnessed me running around the kitchen, exasperated, trying to get things finished instead of relaxing with my guests and a glass of wine. I should probably spend more time improving and perfecting dishes that I have already tried but I simply cannot resist the temptation to try something new! 

My cooking habits have changed over the last couple of years. When my husband was diagnosed with stomach cancer he completely lost his appetite. It seemed cruel to make myself something delicious when he couldn't eat it, and often just the smell of food was enough to make him feel ill. He passed away a few months later and I lost the will to cook - aside from the grief, it felt pointless to go to all that effort just for me. 

That was actually one of the reasons I started this blog - it was a way to try and motivate myself back in to the kitchen. I wanted to try and discover simple recipes that weren't a chore, or things that maybe took longer to prepare but would freeze or keep well in the fridge. My posts have been sporadic at best, but I am always looking for and trying new things with the blog in mind.

When I met my new boyfriend it was another incentive to get cooking again and it was fun to dig out some of my favorite recipes and make an effort in the kitchen again. He is also a huge foodie (and another of those bloody geniuses I spoke of earlier!) and loves to cook and I have enjoyed sharing the kitchen and trying new things as his cooking style is very different to mine. Perhaps I will feature some of his creations here in the future?

My mostly pristine recent purchases

Recently, I have managed to get the magazine and mailing list habits under control by unsubscribing to most of the lists and subscribing to a couple of magazines that are less about getting something on the table and more about gourmet cooking and improving your skills.

There is no end to the book habit though. There's always something new coming out and I just can't help myself! Amazon is a dangerous place to browse and they know me too well now - they keep emailing me with new releases and like a sucker I click on that link!

And before you ask, yes, many of these are just as pristine as those first books I bought over a decade ago! Although the problem now is not so much a lack of time or will to cook but too much choice! I love sitting down with a pile of cookbooks - old or new - and just reading through them like a novel. I get all inspired and excited, and then confused as I don't know what I want to make first!

I have considered choosing a book a month to work from, and while that would work with some of the more generic ones, I can't see my carnivorous boyfriend being too happy if I spend a month cooking from one of my many vegetarian books, or my waistline if I only made things from French Comfort Food!

My other passion - baking!

However I choose to do it, I am determined to dive into my books more and keep honing my kitchen skills, and hopefully a few of those recipes will be worthy of being shared here.

Oh, and I will definitely be buying more cookbooks - you can count on that!!!

Back In The Kitchen!!!

I was horrified today to discover that it has been nearly 6 months since I last posted in The Puuurple Kitchen!!

The main reason for the delay was that I moved house, therefor a lot of my kitchen stuff was packed up early (and who wants to cook when you're packing up a house?!), and then there was the inevitable time it takes to unpack everything at the other end and decide where it all should go.

We have moved to a considerably smaller kitchen and there have been a few teething issues as I have learned how to work in the new space. We are a little short on cabinet space, and as my BF and I are both huge foodies we have a lot of random kitchen appliances and utensils to find homes for, as well as a lot of duplicates. Fortunately our garage has plenty of built in cabinets so there is plenty of room for the overflow!!

I have still been cooking (a girl's got to eat, right?!) but a little less often and any new things I have tried haven't quite been up to sharing standards, or were tasty but the kitchen was too cluttered to take blog worthy photos in.

The delivery of a few new cookbooks, ranging from healthy vegetarian to French comfort food to Peruvian cuisine, has inspired me to get back in the kitchen and it has been fun! Although I'm not quite ready to share the recipes just yet, here is a little sample of what you can expect to read about soon.

I made these breakfast tacos this morning and they were amazing! Lightly mashed black beans with bacon smeared on a tostada and topped with avocado, sour cream, cheese and a fried egg. These were the tastiest thing I have made in a while and I wish I had been organised enough to take photos as they were definitely blog worthy! Don't worry though, these are sure to be a regular feature on our breakfast rotation so you shouldn't have to wait too long for the recipe!

I had a bit of a soupathon on Thursday (because what else do you make in the summer in California?!) First I made a Moroccan chickpea soup, which I must confess is still in the fridge. The combination of spices was a bit harsh for my palate so I will definitely be playing around with that next time, but I'm sure a dollop of yogurt or sour cream will cool it perfectly so I can eat this batch.

More successful, though, was the Italian cannellini bean soup I made. Light and fresh with hearty vegetables, and topped off with some cubes of bread and a few decadent shavings of pecorino. This is another dish that will be in the regular rotation!

I have dusted off my favorite quinoa salad recipe and have been giving it a couple of new twists. I love quinoa but I suck at cooking it. Occasionally I get it right and have perfectly fluffy grains, but more often than not it comes out fairly mushy. I'm working on some different cooking methods and hopefully I should have it perfected soon. This is my favorite salad EVER and I always make a huge batch and eat it for days. Not only is a great side dish for most meats, add a wee fried egg and it makes a delicious breakfast or lunch, and by itself it makes a nutritious high protein snack.

My biggest disappointment was the bacon and potato casserole that I attempted. Don't get me wrong - it was really tasty! Sliced potatoes layered with bacon and leeks, doused with cream and wine and topped off with Gruyere cheese - yum! The problem came from following the recipe which called for the potatoes to be cooked before they were sliced. Sadly my potatoes came out overcooked and would not slice so it was more of a chunky mashed potato casserole. It was still unbelievably good so I will look forward to trying that again soon!

Well, that pretty much covers the most promising of my latest kitchen experiments. I look forward to perfecting them and bringing you more details soon, along with any other culinary (mis)adventures that may transpire!

Until next time .... (but hopefully not in another 6 months .....!)